I asked this question of our IT managers, since we're having so many problems with Ultrabac, and the purchase is now coming into question by upper management. Here's what I got:

Here are some capabilities we need to have a usable, scalable enterprise backup system for ASI. I would like to know that Ultrabac does or can provide them:

For each site, we need the following capability:
1. a single console that allows easy viewing of servers, jobs, schedules logs, and backup sets. In particular, it should be straightforward to see:
* everything that is being backed
* what is being backed up for any particular server. I should not need to know or guess where a job is configured and hunt around to find it. It should be easy to see a list of servers and drill down to what is being backed up on it
* similarly, it should be easy to tell what was supposed to be backed up on any given night, overall
* ditto schedules—it should be easy to see when various servers are backed up, without hunting around, and what servers are backed up each night
* the backup logs for each night and/or for any given server
* the backup sets themselves, for restore purposes, by server and date
2. email notification of success/failure, along with a succinct extract of significant error messages. The backup specialist should not have to navigate to the logs then wade through a huge list looking for anomalies. The list should come to him, and it should contain only items that may require action besides the basic backup job facts (what-when-success or failure).
-> When these conditions are not met, log check falls by the wayside, guaranteed, in a small organization like ours. We can’t devote an hour+ a day to navigating to and wading through dozens of long tedious logs that 99% of the time should contain nothing of interest.

For a distributed global operation like ASI we would ideally have a global console that would show the above for all sites. I know that there are products that have this capability because we were researching them half a decade ago.

1. a single console that allows easy viewing of servers, jobs, schedules logs, and backup sets. In particular, it should be straightforward to see:
* everything that is being backed

UltraBac has the ability to run the backups from a centralized server. In some senerios, 1 server can not handle the load. In this case you would split the backups between diffrent servers. The management can still be done from one location. To veiw the backup jobs on a diffrent backup server, you would use the connect button, and then you would be able to manage them.

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what is being backed up for any particular server. I should not need to know or guess where a job is configured and hunt around to find it. It should be easy to see a list of servers and drill down to what is being backed up on it

as mentioned above, if you have everything centralized, this would be easy to manage.

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similarly, it should be easy to tell what was supposed to be backed up on any given night, overall

* ditto schedules it should be easy to see when various servers are backed up, without hunting around, and what servers are backed up each night
* the backup logs for each night and/or for any given server
* the backup sets themselves, for restore purposes, by server and date

The above requests can all be done with the centrailzed reporting console. I will go into more detail in a bit.

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2. email notification of success/failure, along with a succinct extract of significant error messages. The backup specialist should not have to navigate to the logs then wade through a huge list looking for anomalies. The list should come to him, and it should contain only items that may require action besides the basic backup job facts (what-when-success or failure).
-> When these conditions are not met, log check falls by the wayside, guaranteed, in a small organization like ours. We can’t devote an hour+ a day to navigating to and wading through dozens of long tedious logs that 99% of the time should contain nothing of interest.

What would make things easier on you, is the centralized reporting console. What that is, is a webpage that is setup through iis. What it does is make an internal website that shows the backups that have happened. The backups are listed by date, and then by set name. Each of the backups is color coded, to let the user know if the backup was Successfull (green) had errors (red) or failed (black).

Once inside of the console, then you will be able to view the logs. The logs will also have the errors color coded as well. Yellow for a warning and red for an error.